After the trans­fer, Tisco’s loans will grow about 10 per cent this year, while non-per­form­ing loans (NPLs) will slightly in­crease, given SCBT’s slightly higher NPL.

Tisco’s non- per­form­ing loans will stay at 2.34 per cent of to­tal lend­ing and Stan­dard Char­tered’s at 3 per cent.

Once com­bined, Tisco’s NPL is es­ti­mated to in­crease to 2.4 per cent.

Tisco’s cov­er­age ra­tio is pro­jected to de­cline to 170-180 per cent from 185 per cent ear­lier.

“Although the over­all Thai econ­omy has im­proved, it is not suf­fi­cient to boost com­mer­cial banks’ loan growth.

No progress on NPLs

“The NPL sit­u­a­tion has not im­proved yet. NPLs are ex­pected to hit a record high in the third to fourth quar­ters of this year, from the ear­lier pro­jec­tion of the first to sec­ond quar­ters of this year,” Suthas said.

There­fore, banks will lend with cau­tion to main­tain loan qual­ity, while loans will not grow sharply, he said, adding “we may not see a dou­ble-digit growth”.

Mean­while, LH Fi­nan­cial Group re­ported a 4-per-cent drop year on year in its con­sol­i­dated net profit to Bt670.7 mil­lion in the third quar­ter of this year.

The bank’s nine- month net profit also de­clined 9.6 per cent year on year to Bt1.8 bil­lion fol­low­ing a 35.5-per-cent fall in its non-in­ter­est in­come.